The present invention relates to a device and a method for drying a fluorescent material for use in a cathode ray tube (CRT).
As is well known, the inner surface of a CRT panel is coated with a film of a fluorescent material. The fluorescent film radiates light in response to thermal electrons emitted from an electronic gun. The fluorescent material is cleaned and dried for use in the fluorescent film.
FIG. 1 is a flow-chart of a conventional process for cleaning and drying a fluorescent material and FIG. 2 is a schematic perspective view of a dryer for use in the process. As shown, a fluorescent material 122 is cleaned with water, in step 110. In step 111, the fluorescent material is preliminarily dried. In step 112, the wet fluorescent material is placed on a drying tray 121. In step 113, the drying tray 121 is placed in or mounted within a hot-air dryer 120 for drying the fluorescent material. The fluorescent material hardens while being dried in the hot-air dryer 120. Lumps of the hard fluorescent material are ground in a grinder (not shown) in step 114. In step 115, the ground fluorescent material is re-mounted and dried completely in the hot-air dryer 120. In step 116, the dried fluorescent material is sifted in a sifter (not shown).
However, the known process requires excessive time (about 30 hours) to dry one batch of the wet fluorescent material 122 with the hot-air dryer 120. That is, since the steps of mounting the wet fluorescent material 122 into the hot-air dryer 120, grinding the hard fluorescent material, re-mounting the ground fluorescent material in the hot-air dryer, and transferring the dried fluorescent material to the sifter are all manually performed, time consumption is large and the work is somewhat difficult. Moreover, manually grinding the hard fluorescent material produces dust.